Health Management & Body Shaping
Personal Training, Nutritional Advice & Exercise Tips in London
Planned Focus
It’s 8.00am Saturday morning. You decided to let yourself 'sleep in' today after getting up at 6am every day all last week to get in the gym before work. You are debating whether you should go again today and just take tomorrow off before getting back on that hamster wheel on Monday. You feel you should go, but your body is telling you to take a rest after nearly five months of the same rigorous schedule. You decide to get up and go anyway
Ever gone through a similar thought process? I know I have, and to be honest still do occasionally. But someone once said to me, “More is not always better”. Nice and simple I thought - a bit like me really.
A Brief Analogy
Ok, so you have your goals - your aspirations for your fitness and the way you want your physique to look. So in order to achieve these goals, outside of work you need to spend every waking moment either in the gym, thinking about the gym, or weighing out portions of rice and cutting off every single scrap of fat you may find on a chicken breast? Well not quite.
For a moment I’d like you to think of yourself as a football (soccer) team. In essence, the manager will plan out the training schedule of the team based on their match schedule. Let’s look at a fictional football year.
The year starts with hard training during January, followed by important matches from February to the end of March. There is then a period of easy training during April, followed by four intense training weeks in May. More matches are played for June, July and August. The team then winds down a little for September and October, and picks up training again over November and December.
All the time a good manager will be looking out for his players’ well being physically and mentally, making sure they are being pushed hard at certain times of the year, and then allowing for easier periods. Not to mention rewards for good performance. If a player was seen to be burning out they would give that player some time off and bring them back when seen fit.
How It’s Done
So, how does this relate to you? Well quite simply, you are the football team and the manager. It is down to you to manage your training year effectively and push and pull when you need to.
For example, I decided I wanted to put on a few pounds of quality mass last year and wanted to get really lean for Summer time. This is how my year went:
January & February
I trained for eight weeks where I dropped my calories and increased my exercise frequency. This allowed me to get down to a lean base where my body would then be able to take in a lot of calories and use them productively.
March, April & May
I switched to less-exercise-frequency but used maximal weights each session.
June & July
Another period of leaning up.
August
I was down to a respectable lean look. I used August as a 'coasting' period, and trained infrequently without letting my diet slip.
September & October
Another eight week heavy period.
November
I increased my exercise frequency for a brief four week period.
December
Another coasting period to lead me back into January. I ate a lot of mince pies and peanut M&Ms this month.
If you notice, I gave myself periods where I knew I would be hurting, and other periods where I knew I would be pretty much resting. I also rewarded myself in small ways at certain times of the year.
Even though during the rest periods I would sometimes feel like pushing it after a couple of weeks, I purposely denied myself that 'luxury'. That way I was completely committed to my intense months and didn’t feel guilty in any way about either not training enough or overtraining.
Remember
Of course, your year will be planned completely differently according to your own commitments and goals, but once you have a plan you have something to work to. It’s also important to consider the unexpected family emergencies, mood swings of the husband/wife not letting you train, bailing your friends out of jail, and uncontrollable sexual urges sometimes interrupting your plan. That way you know these things may come up and that you might have to adapt. But then that’ll all be part of your plan, won’t it? So you won’t really have changed anything, will you?
In Summary:
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It’s 8.00am Saturday morning. You decided to let yourself 'sleep in' today after getting up at 6am every day all last week to get in the gym before work. You are debating whether you should go again today and just take tomorrow off before getting back on that hamster wheel on Monday. You feel you should go, but your body is telling you to take a rest after nearly five months of the same rigorous schedule. You decide to get up and go anyway
Ever gone through a similar thought process? I know I have, and to be honest still do occasionally. But someone once said to me, “More is not always better”. Nice and simple I thought - a bit like me really.
A Brief Analogy
Ok, so you have your goals - your aspirations for your fitness and the way you want your physique to look. So in order to achieve these goals, outside of work you need to spend every waking moment either in the gym, thinking about the gym, or weighing out portions of rice and cutting off every single scrap of fat you may find on a chicken breast? Well not quite.
For a moment I’d like you to think of yourself as a football (soccer) team. In essence, the manager will plan out the training schedule of the team based on their match schedule. Let’s look at a fictional football year.
The year starts with hard training during January, followed by important matches from February to the end of March. There is then a period of easy training during April, followed by four intense training weeks in May. More matches are played for June, July and August. The team then winds down a little for September and October, and picks up training again over November and December.
All the time a good manager will be looking out for his players’ well being physically and mentally, making sure they are being pushed hard at certain times of the year, and then allowing for easier periods. Not to mention rewards for good performance. If a player was seen to be burning out they would give that player some time off and bring them back when seen fit.
How It’s Done
So, how does this relate to you? Well quite simply, you are the football team and the manager. It is down to you to manage your training year effectively and push and pull when you need to.
For example, I decided I wanted to put on a few pounds of quality mass last year and wanted to get really lean for Summer time. This is how my year went:
January & February
I trained for eight weeks where I dropped my calories and increased my exercise frequency. This allowed me to get down to a lean base where my body would then be able to take in a lot of calories and use them productively.
March, April & May
I switched to less-exercise-frequency but used maximal weights each session.
June & July
Another period of leaning up.
August
I was down to a respectable lean look. I used August as a 'coasting' period, and trained infrequently without letting my diet slip.
September & October
Another eight week heavy period.
November
I increased my exercise frequency for a brief four week period.
December
Another coasting period to lead me back into January. I ate a lot of mince pies and peanut M&Ms this month.
If you notice, I gave myself periods where I knew I would be hurting, and other periods where I knew I would be pretty much resting. I also rewarded myself in small ways at certain times of the year.
Even though during the rest periods I would sometimes feel like pushing it after a couple of weeks, I purposely denied myself that 'luxury'. That way I was completely committed to my intense months and didn’t feel guilty in any way about either not training enough or overtraining.
Remember
Of course, your year will be planned completely differently according to your own commitments and goals, but once you have a plan you have something to work to. It’s also important to consider the unexpected family emergencies, mood swings of the husband/wife not letting you train, bailing your friends out of jail, and uncontrollable sexual urges sometimes interrupting your plan. That way you know these things may come up and that you might have to adapt. But then that’ll all be part of your plan, won’t it? So you won’t really have changed anything, will you?
In Summary:
- Decide on your year’s main goal.
- Block out family/work commitments in your calendar.
- Use the remaining time to mark out periods of intensity and periods of 'coasting'.
- Reward yourself throughout the year to recognize training landmarks.
- Follow through on your plan.
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